No Game No Life - Episode 6

It might be said that fortune favours the brave, but it also seems to favour the serendipitous in this week's No Game No Life - no sooner has Sora bemoaned the lack of information at his disposal about Disboard's various other races, so he finds a mobile library landing on his doorstep.

That the owner of this library is part of a much-feared and murderous race is of no consequent to Blank's not-so dynamic duo, not least because the world's rules mean that they can't simply murder their opponents any more.  Thus, it's going to take a game to decide this future's library, with Sora offering its guardian Jibril access to a library of his own (courtesy of his iPad) as collateral.  Once Jibril has verified that Sora is indeed not of this world and thus holds an immeasurable amount of new information which she and her race desires, the game is on.  What game you ask?

Why, none other than shiritori.  Of course, this is no ordinary game, but rather "materialisation shiritori", where whatever word or words you choose to use in the game will materialise or, if they already exist in the room, vanish without a trace.  Never one to hang about, the game escalates from the very start with Sora calling up a hydrogen bomb, and as things progress our cast end up with no sexual organs, nipples or clothes... most fortunate for a show that still trades on fan service when it wishes.  Just as the game begins to run out of steam, the true extent of Sora's plan suddenly looms into view - a plan that will happily not only dismantle the planet from beneath their feet, but eventually the entire fabric of the universe itself.

I can forgive No Game No Life all of its titillating silliness (especially when it's woven so expertly into the fabric of the story at hand), when it plays its cards as beautifully as this week's episode - after having some fun with the game residing at its heart, it suddenly ramps things up in a thrillingly grandiose way that left me with a grin plastered upon my face as it presented exactly the kind of twisting, turning and overblown fare that I wanted from the series when it started.  Perhaps if I was a physicist I'd be less impressed, but I'm not so I absolutely lapped up the direction the episode took, and if it can continue in this direction then I'll be one happy bunny.